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Thursday, February 07, 2013

My Proposed Dark Angels List for Blog Wars 5

I've not had a great deal of opportunity to test out my Dark Angels but a combination of the couple of games I've had and general reading round on the internet has led me to think that I'm right in my wariness about fielding Deathwing. Don't get me wrong I love terminators but every time I try to write a list with some I picture myself rolling a pile of 1s! I may find a way of getting them into a list but at the moment I think I'm just too excited about the idea of tons of bikes zipping around. Here's my current effort:

I've dropped the flyer from my previous list because it's well established to be more than a little shitty. I've ditched the 4-man RW bikes and the attack bikes too. The attack bikes are an easy First Blood for my opponents and aren't much of a threat except for a flukey vehicle kill. The most obvious difference is that it's no longer pure ravenwing. The tiny bit of "green" comes in the form of the tacticals. The tacticals just boost the number of bolters I've got for the banner and hopefully we be ignored because of all the bikes zipping around.

The deathwing knights are a new addition. Now I can't pretend they're in their for much more than the fact that I love the models but they could be great in the right situation and at worst they're at least a decent distraction away from my bikes! Haven't tried them yet though so they might end up getting dropped.

Sammael and the librarian can join either the black knights or the command squad depending on my opponent. The librarian has mastery 2 to help him get the more useful Divination powers. In a wierd way the darkshroud and bolter banner work well together. Both need to be priority targets for my opponents but by having both it goes some way to protecting the other. Frankly neither is likely to last long but hopefully after the first couple of turns it won't matter too much about either. There's nice synergy with the grenade launchers and the banner too. Imagine getting one or two rad grenades on a unit and then unleashing 24 twin-linked bolter shots from a single bike squad! If I get two grenades that's something like 18 wounds which cause instant death!!

In general this list seems pretty decent. There's 10 KPs in total which is pretty damn good at 1,850pts. It could be reduced but I don't think many of them are easy for my opponents to take except maybe the darkshroud. That's probably my only real risk of losing First Blood. In objective games I can have a potential 8 scoring units. A little less than my previous lists but still should be plenty.

The obvious weakness of this list is dealing with flyers. I've thought long and hard about this and realised that without allies (which I'd like to avoid for aesthetic reasons) there's very little I can do about them anyway. The Nephilim is likely to end up losing a duel with another flyer and the quad-gun/flakks aren't reliable enough against AV12. I'm just going to bury my head in the sand and pretend they don't exist, OK?

The biggest problem is that none of this is painted at the moment and some of it I don't even own yet, namely the black knights! There's something like 20 weeks til blog wars which is basically a unit a fortnight. I think it's do-able but I've said that before! The list will probably evolve over time but I think I'm pretty safe painting my bikes up for a start. Stay tuned for pictures if/when I get them done.

9 comments:

I think that RW command squad are a waste of points: three expensive guys to die for thousands of shots.No AA: use RW Black Knights' twin-linked plasma weapons combined with the special power of the Librarian to attack aircrafts.

They might not necessarily have a place in a purely competitive list but Blog Wars is about bringing something you think will be fun rather than necessarily 100% reliable. Mind you the standard can be pretty devastating (pun intended) and if you kill it you're ignoring my scoring units.

Black knights still aren't going to be that effective against flyers but they're there as a last ditch option I suppose.

The banner of devastation radius is only 6 inches so that tactical is a waste of time (for that purpose) and even if if was why give the sergeant a chain sword instead of a bolter?

I think you should consider putting the attack bike back in with meltimeltas as that would be your only serious anti armour and if your worried about first blood have them out flank and come in second turn (or third). Unless you know you are going to be fighting csm all the way through the tournament normal Deathwing with thunder hammers and Storm shields are a better option and a lovely Cyclone or assault cannon

Tacticals are there to just sit on an objective and hopefully be ignored. Isn't that hard to keep the banner within 6" of them though. Sergeant has a chainsword for modelling reasons rather than out and out effectiveness.

I might put the attack bike(s) back in but I haven't had chance to play test yet to decide what to drop. They're still easy to kill regardless of whether they're First Blood or not and they're likely to be the closest of my units to my opponents army too.

Normal deathwing may be a better option but they aren't as interesting. They may still make it in though when I test thing a bit more.

To be honest, even with plently of supposed AA units 2-3 AV12 flyers is a problem for any army that doesn't have decent flyers of its own. Even then they aren't that easy to deal with. Fingers crossed I manage to avoid them!!

Good point about the plasma/melta. I'll take that on board.

The second darkshroud feels like a waste of points to me. The army will be clumped anyway because of the standard and they don't really do much late in the game either.

Ideally I'd love to run 2 squads of black knights rather than the DW knights but I can't afford the models to be honest!

Pretty close to what I'm envisioning. I'd perhaps keep the Libby lv 1 and use the points to give him an auspex for -1 to cover. It would also be good to get a Rhino for the tacticals or they will seldom be in range of the standard

He does actually have an auspex which I forgot to list. Trouble with having a rhino for the tacticals is that it's an easy First Blood and they need to jump out to make use of the standard anyway. Besides the idea is that they sit back and get ignored mostly.

Having lvl 2 on the libby opens up options in terms of warp charge 2 powers. It also means if I get two decent buffing charge 1 powers I can use both rather than having to choose. He's still cheap!

I like the look of the list mate, only had a few games in vs DA and gotta say they are going to be tough. I was reading another post and saw your in Sheffield, we'll have to get some games in at some point mate I'm only in Donny.